Love, Care, and Our Civic Imagination
“The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary.” — Ursula K. LeGuin
The multitude of crises, overlapping and growing, that have marked these recent years have served as a dire warning for a darker future unless we dramatically shift our societal priorities. These numerous threats spring from a society organized primarily around precarity. As much as COVID-19 remains an ongoing tragedy, rising authoritarianism, late-stage capitalism, white supremacy, and gross inequality continue to iterate and find new adherents. These are not theoretical challenges to our existence. Their compounding presence results in grave physical and psychological harm. Precarity feeds on the violence that permeates these systems. We rightfully obsess on the latest COVID variants, which are constant reminders of our systemic failures. At the same time, the persistent variants of cruelty, inequality, and neglect continue to adapt. Facing such odds, it is natural to yearn for normalcy. But once we parse what we mean by normal we have to face harsh truths. Normal was never working for most of us. Normal is a proxy for preserving the status quo. The status quo to what extent it is “normal” serves the interest of the few and powerful. And it neglects the needs and wants of the many. In the early stages of the pandemic, I declared that normal, would no longer be enough. If we are going to build a society grounded in love and care, we have no choice but to reject our longing for normal. We have to get on with the hard work of imagining and manifesting new viable future(s).
Imagination is a Scarce Resource
Liebig’s Law of the Minimum states that growth is dictated NOT by total resources available but by the scarcest resource. Known as the limiting factor, the premise states that a complex system can be restrained by its most scarce resource. Limiting factor(s) are not static; they exist in a state of flux, nor are they uniform in scope, scale and impact. The limiting factor can shift from one moment to the next depending on the underlying conditions of the complex system itself. When we think about complex systems within culture, limits are essential. Culture presents itself as boundless, and limits allow us to grapple with spatial relationships, including time. Culture resists siloes and easy classifications. Culture rarely gives us a neatly defined point of origin and subsequent final note. Instead, culture leapfrogs between moments while making meaning. Our ability to think beyond these boundaries is a significant step in addressing the imagination as a scarce resource. Our civic responsibility is to create a viable(s) future, and reframing our limiting factors is essential. Addressing the limiting factors within a complex lived system is an invitation to expand the scope of what is possible.
Liebig’s Law was initially born out of understanding agricultural growth patterns but has since been used in assessing economic opportunities. The growth described in the model was in the neoclassical economic tradition. The limited way we think about development is at the core of our problem. The evolution of neoclassical economics and hyper-capitalism is a death spiral for human civilization. The myth of perpetual growth in a world that wasn’t designed for rapacious consumption has to come to an end. We can no longer discuss growth in those terms and under those conditions. The growth we need to focus on instead is a byproduct of imagination. We need to grow our vision of what is possible. Only by expanding the realm of possibility can we endeavor to co/create new realities.
There are three scopes across various time horizons in a Futures funnel: what is probable, what is plausible, and what is possible. Imagination widens the possibility diameter of the funnel and incorporates diverse scenarios across multiple time horizons. This is the growth we need to focus on if we begin to surface a viable future(s).
Imagination is not our only limiting factor. As I stated therein, complex system limiting factors are not static. Imagination is foundational, and it is in short supply. Strictly as a working term, imagination is still frowned upon in conventional business and policy circles. So-called serious people prefer more serious words. Selecting terms like innovation and disruption over imagination. The language of innovation and disruption emerges from the technology/Silicon Valley operating system. It is a system so dominant we scarcely notice it. Despite our overuse of the word, what passes for innovation nowadays couldn’t be further from it. Most innovation is satisfied tinkering on the edge of industrial age ideas, systems, and technology. There is a concerted effort to use technology to further entrenchment and exploit people and the planet. But pure imagination, the seemingly limitless manner we can make leaps from one condition of being and understanding to another, remains elusive. This is especially true if imagination is to be used to solve big intractable problems or to operate outside of the market dynamics. Without the capacity to imagine a different future, it is difficult to see how to create it? In a world dominated by the all-knowing//all-seeing marketplace, our collective imaginations are often trapped in that framing. Every new tool, every new idea, and connection we can imagine is only useful to the extent that it is a market transaction. Our first radical act is to reject that framework and imagine relationships outside the marketplace.
The limiting factor of imagination capture is so prevalent it has made us reformers rather than radicals. More comfortable with tinkering around the margins than making clean breaks that could lead to new structures. Dusty battles pitting old dead men from Adam Smith to Charles Darwin to Karl Marx to John Maynard Keynes maintain debates that have expired in their usefulness. Arundhati Roy states in her essay The Pandemic is a Portal, “It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks, and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”
Navigating the pandemic is perilous, but for brief moments there was the hint of promise. As we were gripped in a significant slowdown, the ensuing shifts in work and leisure began to reveal there were other ways forward if only we could grasp them. Had everything and every way we had been going amount to anything worth salvaging from the junk heap of wasted ambition? But then the tenacious grip of the old systems adjust. And in doing so, we have started to revert back to the familiar grooves before we can fully shed their shackles and move through the portal lightly. If nothing else, dead ideas are resilient. In turn, we must counter this resilience with a commitment to imagine and make real alternatives that serve us all.
Our language must meet our imagination. If we use the language of the neoliberal marketplace, we will manifest the results of that broken system. Our language must be the language of liberation. In these times, it becomes transformational to speak plainly and brashly on love, trust, compassion, joy, and justice. Without tapping into the power of love language how can we hope to escape the current imagination malaise?
Thriving Over Surviving
“Without community, there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression.” — Audre Lorde
“It is essential to our struggle for self-determination that we speak of love. For love is the necessary foundation enabling us to survive the wars, the hardships, the sickness, and the dying with our spirits intact. It is love that allows us to survive whole.” — bell hooks
During WWII, as the Allied forces increased bombing raids over Nazi Germany and occupied territories, the ensuing bomber losses mounted to alarming levels. Allied high command wanted to better understand how to improve the efficacy of the bombing missions while also ensuring more planes and pilots made it back safely. A study was commissioned to evaluate the damage inflicted on the aircraft (picture above), and statistician Abraham Wald assessed the best action to reinforce the areas that appeared unscathed. In opposition to the military at the time, his reasoning was that focusing on the damaged areas was the wrong way to solve the issue. The problem wasn’t where the planes were damaged but rather where they weren’t. Wald determined it was best to attend to the areas that appeared undamaged rather than reinforce the damaged area. The conventional wisdom of the time could only see the visible damage — — yet it was what they couldn’t see that was costing them aircraft. The visible damage provided no answers. Although heavily damaged, the aircraft could survive and return to the base, which meant it was what wasn’t seen — — the invisible that was most important. What holds true for planes can apply to our bodies. How many of us are living with damage that is not visible? How are we reinforcing the more visible signs of precarity and missing those signs that result in a collective crashing
A society designed to thrive requires imagination grounded in the values of love, care, and justice. Care is a bedrock principle that organizes itself around ensuring the most vulnerable are safe and protected. After all, in a society based on precarity, we are all vulnerable. Our vulnerability is only distinct in the matter of degree. Right now, everything is designed on managing a system where we exempt ourselves from suffering where and when we can leaving others to fend for themselves. Weaponized individualism, selfishness, and narcissism have created a toxic environment that trivializes deep care. In our prevailing market system, care is only meaningful to the extent it can be a source of revenue. In turn, you are only worthy of care to the extent you can pay for it. So what many of us seek is an exemption from a cruel system versus fighting to build a new one. If we turn a blind eye to the barriers and baseline cruelties, we resign ourselves to survival rather than thriving. As a society, we are solving for the most visible damage. We need a revolutionary leap that focuses on everything below the surface that remains invisible to conventional measurement. We need a focus on solving the invisible cracks and fissures that result in societal harm and trauma. Our bodies take on considerable damage, and while some are making it, the losses are mounting.
The Absurdity of the Metaverse
“Won’t anybody take the lead? It’s ourselves we love the least.
Everyone seems to make-believe. That’s the nature of the beast” — Black Thought “Nature of the Beast”
“Technology is the active human interface with the material world. But the word is consistently misused to mean only the enormously complex & specialized technologies of the past few decades supported by massive exploitation both of natural & human resources.” — Ursula K. LeGuin
The new media/business concept commonly referred to as the metaverse is a ready-made example of the high cost we pay for bad ideas that manage to achieve imagination capture. The metaverse is a catch-all term for an entirely new structure built on our existing internet infrastructure. It includes virtual reality, augmented reality, and much more. The metaverse is positioned as an “always-on” conduit that embodies gaming, sports, art, music, and culture in a connected yet parallel world to the physical one. Adherents to the metaverse claim that many of its fundamental adjacent and supporting systems, including cryptocurrency, blockchain, and the burgeoning web3, will dramatically change how we live. This vision, triumphed primarily from a few wealthy tech insiders and their acolytes, is burrowing into our collective imagination. The metaverse and the trickle-down decentralization it promises is the salve these parasites peddle to the masses.
Facebook is now Meta, NFTs are bid up in digital auctions, and web3 is the new frontier of innovation. The metaverse is seen as a panacea for everything from business, arts, and civic governance. All the while, we ignore the high cost to our environment and its toxic libertarian roots. I am not digitally prescient to argue the degree and scope the numerous metaverse predictions will come to be realized. But I believe that within the vast majority of what is promised, very little of it is revelatory or relevant. The metaverse promise of decentralization presupposes this as a primary goal without raising the question of whether this is the best way to organize a society. Quick hint, it is not. Decentralization further entrenches the idea that we are better apart from each other as individuals. It also supports the idea that our civic institutions, financial or otherwise, are unable or unwilling to provide benefit. Our imagination does not have to default to the response that is only more of the same with a different name. If our current institutions fail us, how does our civic imagination create alternatives to construct a just future? How does this create space for us to organize and coordinate collective action to deal with our complex challenges? There is no wisdom present, whatever digital efficiencies might be mined through the metaverse. Wisdom is a deeper fountain. An endless reserve of inspiration brings forth the connections and pathways that make life more prosperous and more intentional. Our slavish adherence to tech-enabled determinism is a diet of empty calories. It fills our bellies to near bursting but leaves us devoid of anything that nourishes our bodies, much less our souls. So much of the conversation around the metaverse props itself up on new content, empowering creators, and of course, commerce. But where is the room for culture? What culture exists in this space is predicated on the same toxic libertarian tech bro bullshit we are choking on. Any ideology advanced by that crowd should be met with a healthy dose of skepticism. In all honesty, without the daily cataloging of the outrageous sums of money bidding for digital pictures of apes and other utter nonsense, would anyone care about this at all? The absurdity of the metaverse is only outdone by the tragedy of imagination capture pouring itself into an open sinkhole. Commerce is not a community. The crises we face require deep care and a connection to our ecological environment if a viable future(s) is possible. Care can only be born out of a community that is moving with solidarity and shared values to support one another in a spirit of civic love. A metaverse that can not deliver on that is just more of the same.
What can a metaverse provide for us that our matrixed world does not? We are already part of a complex and profoundly connected reality. We exist in a richer, diverse, and complex world than any digitally constructed metaverse could ever fathom, much less replicate. The ecology that supports life on this planet is intricate and so beautifully fragile we are still discovering and rediscovering how it works. Miracles, big and small, are unfolding all around us, and no simulacra can compete with them. Our digital/online life is merely an approximation to lived experiences. Engagement with our natural world reveals wonders that result in an almost indescribable awe. These feelings can’t be duplicated in a digital world. That nagging falseness of digital is how we recognize, despite the familiarity, something is “off.”
Every system that matters is complex and contains a world within worlds. Our physical biology has entire worlds of microorganisms or human microbiota that we host on our skin, cells, and gut. Forests hold extensive root structures that nourish and sustain trees, plants, fauna, animals, and the soil. Every place we look is overflowing with deep networks and symbiotic systems that are simply staggering in their scope. How can we think differently about our world when we acknowledge and center these relationships as far more worthy of our time, attention, and care?
Despite lofty claims of access and opportunity, the metaverse does not challenge the existing power structures of capitalism and big tech. Democratization and decentralization might be good branding, but there is very little of it in a practical sense. Decentralization by itself does very little to confront or reimagine existing power structures. Our biggest challenges require a more profound connection than we currently have. If anything, our deep connectedness has been made laid bare across multiple fronts including our health, supply lines, financial systems and beyond. Blind decentralization demands that we erase that reality and instead claim more rugged individualism is the best way forward. This claim, and others like it, has only contributed to our decline.
The metaverse relies on ramping up the scarcity mindset that permeates late-stage capitalism. The metaverse imagination capture is predicated on establishing a legible system. The quest for legibility is the standard operating procedure for industrial-age thinking. Legibility relies on what is seen and known (and itemized) and in turn validates order to catalog and track. Endless legibility results in a world that is less diverse and more precarious. In contrast, the natural world thrives in its illegibility. The connections that make our world vibrant are mainly invisible and unstructured. An unfettered imagination in an illegible world can flourish with more diversity and fragility. That world is more intricate, vital, and resilient than any digital alternative. Seemingly beyond our reach are deep root structures, the intertwined supportive nature of wild forests, the myriad ways big and small we are part of the universe.
Ultimately we are asking: what is the future of a precarious world? What is the future of a fragile world? How does stewardship, defined as the shared responsibility of a society to oversee, protect and pass on its critical resources over the course of generations, play a role in our organizational thesis? In a world of abundance we embrace the connection between all living beings and recognize the sanctity of all life as precious — — not precarious.
Are We Going to Hold Each Other Close?
“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains” — Assata Shakur
It sounds so easy, which is why there is healthy skepticism that everything we need to imagine a different world we already have. Because we only need each other moving in solidarity with shared values and a commitment to make a better world for everything and all of us. We need to invite everyone to co-create and build together across disciplines, backgrounds, and geographies. The fragile nature of our relationships will only prosper and emerge if we actively nurture them with deep care.
Our language must affirm our highest values. Our language must work in service to manifest the world we want to make and remake. Our language must be steeped in love emphasizing trust, compassion, joy, and justice. We must replace the language of the marketplace. We must resist being reduced to data points. Our systems of life are more than consumer-driven transactions. Our language must be the language of abundance, not of scarcity.
Through our civic imagination, we can expand how we make sense of the world. We can embrace new ways of knowing that can assist in an emergent future that is there just beyond our grasp. Understanding and harnessing the connection between all living systems is a gift we have only begun to explore.
Cynicism remains the enemy of a robust civic imagination. Cynicism serves the interest of the powerful by encouraging you to resist the burden of struggle. Why organize resistance when “nothing will ever change” or “it has always been this way.” Cynicism saps us of the vigor needed to imagine and fight for a different reality. Robbed of our agency we lose sight of the fact that we are part of shaping a different reality. The emergent values and ideas needed to create a world that is beneficial to all living beings and systems can only come from us. Everything is possible when our hope meets intention.
Holding each other close is a promise we make to one another that we are all in this together regardless of circumstances. Currently, this is a false promise. Our “we’s” remain separated by inequalities of all kinds, but we can and should endeavor for a true “we” grounded in love, care and justice. We must listen to one another, sincerely invite collaboration and embody compassion. Are we going to align ourselves with the remnants of broken empire or with each other?
